We got to get out of here

Roaches freak me out.

The sight of one turns me into a frightened, screeching 7-year old girl. You can imagine my level of skeeviness when last week in my bathroom, while standing up and returning some beer to the Pacific, I spotted a roach inside the Kleenex box that sits by the toilet.

He was rather large, about 2 inches in length and had set up himself rather cozily atop the next tissue to be drawn from the box.

I finished my business and then rather gingerly lifted the entire box and made a beeline for the trash can in the driveway, because the thought of him slipping out and crawling over my hand put me at DefCon 5.

Upon return, I told my wife what had transpired and she said, perhaps not thinking the thing through…

"Why did you throw out the whole box of tissues?"

"Really?" I replied, "would you want to use one of the remaining tissues in the box?"

That ended that inquiry.

Momentarily at least. Because then came the follow up question.

"Maybe we should get an exterminator?"

One cockroach, and these are the big lone wolf kind not the type that travel in disgusting swarms like the ones seen in a NYC apartment or a horror movie, one sole cockroach gets in the house and it happens every three months or so, and the next thing my wife wants to do is spend $1000 to have a guy in a white jump suit spray the house with the same dead-dead-dead juice I can get in a can for $3.99 at the local supermarket.

This isn't about bringing a gun to a knife fight. This is about bringing a tactical nuclear weapon to a knife fight.

I'm surprised she didn't suggest selling the house.

Not that I'm completely unsympathetic.

Like I said roaches freak me out, but they have a Kafka-esque effect on my wife and change her from a cool, calm and collected individual into a someone less calm, less cool, less collected who will leap atop the coffee table screaming...

"Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!"